As Governors Meet, White House Outlines Drop in Aid to States

A meeting of governors in Washington on Sunday, coinciding with White House budget warnings, included Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, second from right.Credit
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — In an effort to put pressure on Congressional Republicans, the White House warned on Sunday that automatic budget cuts scheduled to take effect this week would have a devastating impact on programs for people of all ages in every state.

Cabinet officers sounded the alarm on television talk shows, and their concerns resonated with state officials, who were in town for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

Daniel I. Werfel, the controller of President Obama’s budget office, held an unusual Sunday briefing to catalog the effects of the cuts state by state.

He and Jason Furman, the principal deputy director of the National Economic Council, said they were not exaggerating the damage that would be done.

In place of the across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, Mr. Obama wants Congress to agree to what he calls a “balanced plan.” The plan includes cuts in selected domestic programs, savings in certain benefit programs and additional tax revenue collected from some corporations and high-income people.

The conflict is shaping up as a real-world test of the importance and value of the federal government. Democrats expressed confidence that Americans would feel the impact of an $85 billion cut in a $3.5 trillion budget, while Republicans insisted that they would not accept new taxes on top of those signed into law by Mr. Obama last month.

The White House intensified its campaign just as Congress was returning to work this week and some governors were expressing anguish over the impact of the impending automatic cuts in federal spending.

“We don’t do across-the-board cuts in state government, and it’s a stupid idea in the federal government,” said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, a Democrat.

But Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a Republican, said in an interview: “The White House is engaged in scare tactics. Every governor in this country knows how to cut their budget by 2 or 3 percent, and the White House ought to learn how to do it.”

“The sequester is not the best way to do it,” Mr. Heineman added. “We need greater flexibility in that process. But it’s hard for me to believe that America is going to be devastated by the federal government cutting its budget 2 or 3 percent. That’s a bunch of malarkey.”

Another Republican, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, said in an interview, “The White House is in a campaign mode of trying to scare everybody, rather than sitting down with Congress and working out what the solution is to the budget.”

State-by-state estimates of the impact of federal policies have been a staple of White House efforts to mobilize public opinion for more than 20 years.

Photo

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia entering a National Governors Association session on Sunday.Credit
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

In its report Sunday, the White House described how the budget cuts would hit states, with an emphasis on jobs lost.

“Ohio will lose approximately $25.1 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 350 teacher and aide jobs at risk,” the White House said. “In Georgia, around 4,180 fewer children will receive vaccines for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, whooping cough, influenza and hepatitis B due to reduced funding for vaccinations of about $286,000.

“Pennsylvania could lose up to $271,000 in funds that provide services to victims of domestic violence, resulting in up to 1,000 fewer victims being served. In Texas, approximately 52,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed, reducing gross pay by around $274.8 million in total.”

In addition, the White House said, many of the nation’s 398 national parks would be partly or fully closed.

On Friday, the administration said, $85 billion in cuts will automatically begin to take effect, with many domestic programs facing reductions of 9 percent and some military programs being reduced by 13 percent in the remaining seven months of the federal fiscal year.

Appearing Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, described the cuts as a threat to the economy.

“These are job-killing cuts, and we have to find a way to avoid them,” Mr. O’Malley said. “We cannot cut our way to prosperity. We need a balanced approach to continue our jobs recovery.”

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, portrayed the Republicans as willful and obstinate.

“Republicans have decided they want the sequester to go into effect,” Mr. Pfeiffer said in a conference call with journalists. “They have decided that they are not open to compromise, that these cuts should happen, that these cuts are better for the country, better for 100,000 Americans to lose their jobs. It’s better for people to wait in longer lines at airports; it’s better for kids to get kicked out of Head Start than to close a few loopholes that benefit the wealthy. That’s the choice they’ve made.”

Mr. Pfeiffer said Republicans were undermining their own long-term goal of deficit reduction because “they don’t want to give the president the win of additional revenue.”

Republicans say the tax changes proposed by the president would stifle economic growth.

Sean M. Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Republicans agreed that “the sequester is not the right way to control federal spending.” But he described the White House report on the state-by-state impact as “a public relations stunt.”

In deciding how to carry out the cuts, Mr. Werfel said, agencies have only “limited flexibility.”

“There are constraints to what an agency can do in taking this across-the-board $85 billion cut,” Mr. Werfel said. “The way the law is written, it has to be taken from a percentage cut from every program, project and activity.”

Under the Budget Control Act of 2011, which created the latest version of the sequester, some programs, like Medicaid and food stamps, are exempt from the automatic cuts, and cuts in Medicare payments cannot exceed 2 percent.

Social Security benefits would not be cut. But the White House said that the automatic budget cuts would force the agency to “curtail service to the public,” and that the backlog of Social Security disability claims would increase.

A version of this article appears in print on February 25, 2013, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: As Governors Meet, White House Outlines Drop in Aid to States. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe